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New refugee policies shake some families, reunite others

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published 12:59 p.m. CT March 28, 2018

The U.S. is on pace to only accept 20,000 refugees in 2018 — well below the Trump administration's 45,000 cap

Moza Ausa, a 4-year-old refugee from the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, stands in the family's new apartment in Columbus, Ohio, during the early morning hours of Thursday, Feb. 22.. The family, including six children, had just flown to Columbus from Africa. The DRC is not included in the Trump administration's travel ban.(Photo: AP photo)

COLUMBUS, Ohio — In apartment complexes on opposite sides of town, the women — one a former shopkeeper from Somalia, the other a teacher from Bhutan — waited for children to come home.

Only the teacher, Devi Gurung, was rewarded for her patience.

Outside an apartment decorated with Buddhist prayer flags, she watched as a school bus pulled up and the niece she had not seen in four years, hopped to the curb.

"I am lucky," said Gurung, reunited with her sister's family days earlier after spending more than half her life in a refugee camp.

The next morning, Amina Olow unfolded a year-old letter offering hope that daughters she has not seen in a decade would join her soon. She's heard nothing since.

"My kids, they're a part of my body," Olow said, her voice breaking.

Olow and Gurung are here because the U.S. granted them safe haven. But that's where their stories diverge.

Starting early last year, President Donald Trump banned arrivals from several, mostly Muslim countries, cut the cap on refugee admissions and suspended a program to reunite families split in the resettlement pipeline.

The restrictions are keeping many families apart, while allowing some to reunite, sorting people by country, and effectively by religion.

Somali refugee Fadumo Hussein protested those policies last January, weeks after her parents were approved to enter the U.S. More than a year later, they remain stuck in Uganda, their case on hold.

Watching Bhutanese neighbors welcome their own family members in the months since, Hussein's been "happy for them because they were able to reunite," but also confused.

"What is different about us, like Somalis or the other countries that are being banned," her daughter, Afnan Salem, asked, "when we are all coming for the same reasons?"

Uncertainty ahead

In the mid-1800s, German immigrants flocked to red-brick blocks just south of Columbus' downtown. But in recent years, Columbus has become a magnet for refugees, drawn by affordable rents, jobs in distribution centers — and family already here.

Apartments on Columbus' north side have become the center of the largest U.S. population of Bhutanese refugees, most Buddhist or Hindu, expelled during an ethnic cleansing campaign against ethnic Nepalis in the early 1990s. They live alongside the country's second largest Somali community, most Muslim, and refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, most of them Christian.

"Everybody has a dream that if I go, there will be a chance for my son to come or my mother to come," said Jhuma Acharya, a refugee from Bhutan now working for Community Refugee & Immigration Services, one of Columbus' two resettlement agencies.

But Trump's policies have shaken those expectations.

"There's certainly a pretty dramatic shift" in the mix and number of arrivals, said Kathleen Newland, of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

The U.S. is on track to take 21,000 refugees this year, the fewest since a 1980 law established the modern resettlement system, and a quarter those admitted in the final year of Barack Obama's presidency. About 15 percent are Muslim, down from 47 percent a year ago.

"The United States is committed to assisting people of all religions, ethnicities, and nationalities," a State Department spokeswoman said in a written response to questions.

Harka Gurung, a 36-year-old refugee from Bhutan, lifts her 8-year-old daughter, Eden Gurung, as she arrives from school in Columbus, Ohio, on Wednesday, Feb. 21. Harka, her husband and daughter were the first of their family to arrive from a refugee camp in Nepal. Her parents and a sister joined them in February after a four-year separation. Columbus is home to about 20,000 Bhutanese immigrants, representing the largest Bhutanese community in the United States.(Photo: AP photo)

Changes take hold

Trump's policies have left Bhutan and Congo as the largest contributors to the dwindling pool, accounting for 45 percent of arrivals since October and making Columbus an anomaly.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has accepted few from countries like Syria.

For those already here, the changes are playing out in unnerving and uneven ways.

A few minutes before midnight, Esta Ausa peered down the concourse of the Columbus airport, ignoring friends' teasing to relax. It had been 18 months since Ausa, 22, left her parents, brothers and sisters behind in a refugee camp in Tanzania.

The family is among 675,000 the UN estimates have fled Congo to escape civil war and renewed ethnic violence. After the U.S. put a hold on new refugees last year, Ausa said her parents' approval to enter the U.S. was canceled twice.

When Ausa spotted a cluster of red and yellow winter jackets in the nearly empty terminal, she danced toward the security perimeter — and wrapped her mother in her arms.

"I thank God for everything," her father, Ausa Emedi, said.

Hours later, Olow recounted last seeing her daughters. She was running a food shop in South Africa in 2008. When rioters attacked foreigners and looted the business, she took the girls to live with an aunt, before she was admitted to the U.S. in 2014.

Olow, now an interpreter in an apartment leasing office, unfolded the letter from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, approving her older daughter's petition.

"The president should have empathy for families that have been dislocated, just like mine," she said. "We need one another."

As Olow walked back through the desks, co-worker Janet Siford noticed her tears.